King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (33 page)

Each speaker vied with his fellows in denouncing the impropriety of the High Priest’s action, and when all had said their say, the President of the debate asked : “Is any son of Israel hardy enough to dare speak on the other side of the question ?”

Jesus rose and begged the President’s permission to ask a question. (“Ah, there he is again !” said the First Doctor.)

“Ask on, hardy boy !”

“I have heard talk in the City about this gift. Was it not devoted by the High Priest to a particular object—namely, the building of a house of easement to the retiring chamber where he is required to pass the last week before the Day of Atonement ?”

“It was so devoted, and the retiring chamber is, beyond doubt, a part of this Temple.”

“Nevertheless I hold that the money was well spent.”

“How? What is that? What is this child of Belial saying ?” every one cried.

“Is it not written by the prophet Micah in the first chapter and the seventh verse of his book : ‘Of the hire of a harlot has she gathered them, and unto the hire of a harlot shall they return’? This text the learned Hillel has expounded in the sense that as clean things naturally consort with clean, so unclean consort with unclean. Would any man cry aloud with horror if he saw a swine-herd fondling his swine? No, but only if he saw the swine-herd fondling the child of a pious Israelite, or this child fondling a swine. Let like mate with like. A house of easement is an unclean place. It is an enclave of uncleanness in a clean Temple ; it is not in the Temple, nor of it. If the woman has repented, all Israel should rejoice and the High Priest should not refuse her gift, which is of repentance. The house of easement, though unclean, is a necessity : let it therefore be bought not with clean money but with unclean.”

The Doctor asked scornfully : “And is harlotry also a necessity if, as you say, like must mate with like ?”

“A harlot sins for necessity, for no woman of Israel would make a harlot of herself for choice and be lost to her family and friends. Hunger and misery drive her to the trade. Every harlot in Israel, as my teacher the learned Simeon of Alexandria told me, is a virgin seduced and cast off by her house. From which I judge that so long as deceitful men must seduce virgins, and fools must company with harlots, harlotry is a necessity ; equally, so long as High Priests do not fast, in preparation for the Day of Atonement, a house of easement is a necessity.”

No one had a reply to this argument, which followed the soundest Pharisaic principles : it was generous, practical and based on a sound text. “Good, good !” murmured the Second Doctor, and quoted to his companion : “ ‘Regard not the bottle, but what is in it. Some new bottles are full of old wine, and contrariwise.’ ”

Jesus added boldly : “Let any man dispute this who dare !”

There came an unexpected interruption from the fringe of the crowd. A voice cried out : “At last, at last! My son! We had thought you lost !”

Jesus slipped through the crowd and saluted Mary and Joseph reverently. Mary continued : “We have all been distraught with anxiety these last three days. Why did you not tell us that you were remaining behind at Jerusalem? Had you no thought for your mother ?”

“I am no longer accountable to a mother for my goings and comings ; I am engaged on the Father’s business. Nevertheless, forgive me for the grief I have caused you. I told my cousin Palti to let you know where I was ; the message has gone astray.”

The First Doctor nudged the Second, drew him aside and said in a whisper : “You will see that I am right. Had that man been the boy’s father, he could not have allowed the woman to do the talking. You will remember the judgement of Solomon : it is in moments of danger that parentage is proved.”

“Oddly enough,” said the Second Doctor, “I recognize the man, though he has aged greatly since we last met and his beard is cut in a different style, and his garments are poorer. He is one Joseph, son of Heli, of the House of David. Everyone supposed that he had been killed in the Bethlehem massacre, but he turned up again in Galilee last year.”

“Joseph—Joseph of Emmaus? The Joseph who used to be in the timber business ?”

“That is the man.”

“I remember some talk, about ten years ago, or it may have been longer, of his marriage to a daughter of old Joachim the Heir, who died so miserably when Athronges made his last stand at Cocheba. I forget the exact circumstances of the marriage, but they were most unusual. I know that he arrived with the bride-money and found that the girl had been kidnapped by bandits. But what I cannot recall is whether she was restored to him. I was out of Jerusalem at the time, but I will wager you my old cloak against your new one that the girl was seduced by the kidnappers and that old Joseph made an honest woman of her. I know him to be a man of the greatest humanity.”

“I will accept your wager. It cannot be so. Joseph would never allow the boy to enter the Temple if he knew him to be a bastard.”

“No? Then perhaps that is why he let the boy’s mother do the talking : he was scandalized to find him here.”

“Well, we shall see.”

“How? It is no use trying to consult the family records of the House of David. The Wicked One and his son destroyed them all.”

“The boy’s mother, if my theory holds—if, that is to say, she was the girl whom the bandits kidnapped—was a Temple virgin, and the payment of the bride-money will have been recorded in the Temple Accounts. My son is a chief accountant. Let us go to him at once !”

An account of Jesus’s intervention in the debate about the prostitute’s gift was brought to Hillel on his sick-bed by his disciples. He approved it in this judgement, one of the last that he gave the world : “The generous heart will always find a door to open for those who seek the Lord ; the niggard will always find a bolt to bar them out.” The judgement was later reported to Jesus, who treasured it as proudly as a Roman soldier treasures his Civic Crown of gallantry.

That winter Hillel died, and never was a private citizen so widely mourned in the history of the Jewish nation. In every hamlet of Judaea and Galilee, in every synagogue of the Dispersion from Cadiz to Samar-kand, from the outflow of the River Don to the Cataracts of the Nile, eyes were wet, heads were shrouded, shoulders heaved with sobs, mouths abstained from food and drink. “Hillel is dead, Hillel is dead !” the people mourned, “Hillel the sage, who first taught Israel to love.” It was indeed Hillel who had first used the noun “creatures” in conjunction with the verb “to love”. Such was the greatness of his heart that he
preached love not merely to his fellow-Israelites, not merely to all Sons of Adam, that is to say his fellow-men in general, but to all living creatures of whatever sort, clean and unclean ; justifying this apparent absurdity by the injunction given in the psalm to all things with breath in them—including whales, beasts, birds and creeping things—that they should praise the Lord. Even among the Sadducees of the Temple the sage’s loss was felt keenly. “His word was always on the side of peace,” they said.

At Nazareth, Mary wept and said to Jesus : “My son, when you come to die, may you be permitted to leave behind you something of the same fragrance that will ever cling to the name of Hillel.”

“May I always be permitted to find the door of which he spoke, Mother, and wrench it open !”

J
ESUS
came to Jerusalem again with his parents for the next Passover. This time Joseph permitted him to remain behind, after the Feast, to attend the public debates and lectures.

After saying goodbye to his family outside the City walls, he went up to the Temple. A rheumy-eyed man squatting inside the East Gate recognized him and said with an ingratiating smile : “Well met, learned Jesus of Nazareth! I expected to see you come walking in to-day. I have an invitation for you : to arbitrate impartially on a nice point of the Law which is being disputed between two patrons of mine. Each protests that he is right, and they have a wager on the matter.”

“To make the Law the subject of a wager is unseemly. Besides, I am no Doctor of the Law.”

“There is nothing unseemly in the argument itself ; and you are well on the road to your Doctorate.”

“By the favour of the Lord,” said Jesus hastily. “Who are the disputants ?”

“Teachers in an Academy.”

“Then let them choose as arbiter the head of their Academy.”

“I was to wait at the Gate until you came in ; my patrons insist that you are the only one who can decide the point.”

Jesus resisted the impulse to tell the old man to go about his business ; there was something evil in his manner. But he remembered what patience the learned Hillel had always shown when asked to settle trivial questions—and on one occasion at least a wager had been concerned. “I will do as you ask,” he said reluctantly.

He was led to a gloomy room overlooking the Court of the Gentiles. The old man said to a tall stupid-looking Levite who was gazing out
of the window : “Detain this boy for a short time, friend, while I fetch the two persons of whom I spoke.”

Jesus asked indignantly : “Did I not give you my word that I would arbitrate in the dispute ?”

But the old man had already gone.

He said to the Levite : “By your dress, Sir, I take you to be a Levite of the Temple Watch. Can this be the guard-room ?”

The Levite nodded without speaking.

“A strange place for a debate.”

The Levite nodded sagely and then said after a long pause : “Very strange !” and after a still longer pause : “You must tell the truth, you know. It will be better for you to make a full confession and restore what you took. The Captain of the Watch does not lay on very hard. He deals with boys himself, you know.”

“I do not understand. Who was that smiling old man who brought me here ?”

“He? He is Hophni the Toad. He never forgets a face. You are the boy who was nearly caught at the Feast of Tabernacles, are you not? The one who robbed Meleager the money-changer, but managed to dodge out through the Gate and hide in the crowd ?”

Jesus laughed. “I was not in Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles.”

“So you say! Well, then, what is your crime ?”

“I am not accused of any crime. This is some witty fellow’s jest at my expense. Let me go now !”

“I am instructed to detain you.”

The Watch returned at that moment from their morning’s round. The Captain asked : “Who is this boy ?”

“Hophni brought him in, Reverend Sir.”

The Captain frowned. He asked Jesus : “Are you by any chance the son of Joseph of Emmaus ?”

“My father once lived at Emmaus. His name is Joseph son of Heli. He is now registered as of Nazareth in Galilee.”

“Yes, that is the man. Then I am sorry to say that you must consider yourself under arrest.”

“Sir, here comes Hophni with the witnesses,” said the Levite.

The First and Second Doctors entered, followed by a younger man with an ink-horn and pen-case dangling from his belt. The First Doctor slipped four drachmae into the hand of Hophni who went back, chuckling, to his post at the Gate.

The Second Doctor, who looked ill at ease, said : “You understand, Captain, that we do not wish this matter to be made public—there must be no scandal. May we withdraw into your private room ?”

“It is at your disposal, learned Doctor.”

When Jesus was brought into the private room the Captain said gently to him : “You are no longer a child. Do you already understand something of the Law ?”

Jesus bowed.

“You are styled Jesus the son of Joseph of Nazareth, formerly of Emmaus, and of his wife Miriam? “

“I am.”

“You have always lived with them ?”

“From birth. I was born at Bethlehem of Ephrath.”

“How did you come to be born there ?”

“My father took my mother to Bethlehem when she was nearing her account. Being of the House of David, he wished me to be born on family ground. That was the year in which King Herod died—about four months before his death.”

“Who were your mother’s parents ?”

“She was a daughter of Joachim of Cocheba, one of the Heirs, since deceased in poverty ; but a Temple ward.”

“You can read fluently ?”

“By the help of him who made me.”

“Read this !”

It was a page detached from the Temple Treasury account book, recording a marriage contract between Joseph son of Heli, of the House of David and the tribe of Judah, a native of Emmaus, and Simon son of Boethus, High Priest, guardian of the Temple ward Miriam, daughter of Joachim the Heir, a native of Cocheba, and his wife Hannah. The instrument was dated ten months before the birth of Jesus, but the receipt for ten shekels was not recorded until four months later, and to the receipt was added in very small, very faint letters : “There is wanting one half-shekel.”

The accountant said : “The words written small are in the hand of the then High Priest. It is a most unusual case. I have searched the records and found a receipt for the payment of the missing half-shekel ; it was sent from Alexandria by the High Priest after his deposition by King Herod and has been glued to a later page. This receipt is dated a month after the King’s death.”

Jesus, very white now, asked : “You mean that my father Joseph did not marry my mother until after she was with child by him ?”

“Either by him or by another,” said the Captain of the Watch. “I have been making private inquiries, and I hear a rumour that your mother was carried off by bandits immediately after the drafting of the contract and held by them for some three months. This may well explain why Joseph was unwilling at first to put down the last half-shekel of his contract. Well, my boy, I do not wish to distress you, but I must explain the legal position. There is a rule which Moses, not I, made and which I am ordered to enforce : it is that nobody born out of wedlock is permitted to enter the sanctified Courts of this Temple. The penalty for a breach of this rule is death. You acted in ignorance—I can see that you acted in ignorance—and therefore I shall make no report in writing on the matter, in order not to bring scandal on your House, though I am obliged to inform the High Priest Annas of the action that I have taken. But unless you can satisfy me that you are mistaken as to the
date of your birth and that you were born in legitimate wedlock, I have no alternative but to forbid you to enter. Mind you, I do not call you a bastard, and indeed cannot do so because I have no clear evidence as to the date of your birth.”